On discovery and consumption

I was reading this article earlier today and it got me thinking about something that I have never considered before. One major change the web has experienced was the consolidation of discovery and consumption. Digg was—and still is—a place to discover new content but the consumption of that content takes place away outside of Digg.

And the same was true for discussions around the content. Those used to happen in comment sections spread across the internet. But now, places like Twitter or Instagram are acting as places for both the discovery and the consumption of new content.

You also have sites like Reddit or Hacker News that are somewhat in between. There you can still discover content but what's more interesting is that the discussions are happening on the platforms. So you have a consolidation of discovery and community interactions. I'd argue that in those two cases a good % of users value the discussion more than the discovery part.

And as a result of that you're encouraged to come back to the discovery platform once you're done consuming the content because if you want to discuss it, you no longer do it on the site where the content lives, you do it on the discovery platform itself.

Maybe all this was obvious to you but I honestly never noticed it.